From footnote to infamy
Phillip Wellman exchanges thoughts 18 years ago today with umpire Brent Rice
Back in 1987, a 25-year-old backup infielder Phillip Wellman makes the Class AA Harrisburg Senators’ Opening Day roster, walks in his lone plate appearance and then becomes a footnote in franchise history as being the first player released from the first pro team on City Island since 1952.
He never plays in another game.
Wellman, though, continues to carry on in baseball as a long-time manager in the minor leagues, working in 2,903 games over 23 seasons through 2023 with the San Diego Padres’ Class AAA team in El Paso.
No matter how many prospects he helps develop, though, the most talked about moment in Wellman’s career lives on through the internet.
There, and forevermore, anyone may find Wellman’s epic meltdown 18 years ago today as manager of the Class AA Mississippi Braves during their game at Chattanooga.
Phillip Wellman after tossing an imaginary grenade
Words cannot do justice to Wellman’s three-minute implosion in 2007 as he punctuates his ejection from the game by going, well, a tad berserk, crawling around the infield and lobbing imaginary grenades at the umpires.
Not that the faith-based Wellman enjoys the reminder as he always worries about the damage his antics from that moment in 2007 causes to his reputation as a baseball lifer, as a teacher of the game to its next generation of players.
“There are very few major league games I watch now where I haven’t crossed paths with some of those kids,” Wellman tells MLB.com in 2021.
Phillip Wellman
“So, I’m hoping when they put me six feet under, people will remember me for more than just that video. If they don’t, they didn’t know me.”
At the time in 2007, the 45-year-old Wellman thinks he knows the Atlanta Braves – his employer at the time – well enough that his now virtually infamous meltdown would lead to his immediate firing.
Turns out that Wellman is wrong, especially after Braves manager Bobby Cox sees the video and calls Wellman to say all is well.
“I don’t know how funny this is, Bobby,” Wellman recalls that conversation with MLB.com.
“It’s awesome,” Cox tells Wellman. “If I thought my bad knees would let me get up off the ground, I’d try it myself.”